LEXICALIZATION

1. (Morphology) The addition of new open-class elements to a repository of holistically processed linguistic units. At the basis of lexicalization are word-formation processes such as affixation, compounding, or borrowing, which are a necessary precondition for lexicalization. Still, lexicalization goes beyond word formation in important respects. First, lexicalization also involves multi-word expressions and set phrases; second, it includes a range of processes that follow the coinage of a new element.
    These processes conjointly lead to holistic processing, that is, the cognitive treatment of a linguistic element as a unified whole. Holistic processing contrasts with analytic processing, which is the cognitive treatment of a linguistic unit as a complex whole that is composed of several parts. Lexicalization is usefully contrasted with grammaticalization, that is, the emergence of new linguistic units that fulfill grammatical functions. Finally, lexicalization is also a concept that lends itself to the study of cross-linguistic differences in the types of meaning that are lexicalized in specific domains such as, for example, motion. | Martin Hilpert, 2019
2. (Morphology) A phenomenon by which a morphologically complex word starts to behave like an underived word in some respect, which means that at least one feature (semantic, syntactic, or phonological) becomes unpredictable. Thus a lexicalized word has at least one aspect which cannot be predicted by the general rules of grammar.
    For example, the Dutch adjective reusachtig has two readings, one is transparently derived from the noun reus_N and the suffix -achtig which can be paraphrased as 'like a reus (giant)', and one which simply means 'very big'. This latter reading is lexicalized. Additional evidence for this comes from the fact that in this latter reading the pronunciation is slightly different: the final phoneme of reus is pronounced as [z], while it is pronounced as [s] in the transparent reading. Assuming that lexicalization eradicates internal boundaries, the phonological rule FINAL DEVOICING cannot apply in the lexicalized form. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
3. (Neurocognitive Linguistics) On lexicalization Lamb notes that even though a word such as happiness can be understood on the basis of the meanings of its constituent morphemes, the frequency with which this combination occurs is such that the lexicon of the typical speaker will contain not just the separate lexemes happy and -ness but also a complex lexeme happiness. Moreover, for this to be the case it is unnecessary for the meaning of happiness to be in any way idiomatic: It is repeated use rather than degree of idiomaticity that determines presence or absence of a higher-level lexical node.
    Furthermore, the more frequently any part of the linguistic network (or wider cognitive network) is used, the easier it is to use it again: "The pathways of the brain are like pathways through a meadow or field or jungle—the more they are used the easier they become to use again".
    In formalizing this phenomenon in Relational Network Grammar (RNG, a.k.a. Neurocognitive Linguistics), lines of different strengths are used (e.g. they are drawn with different thicknesses) and it is assumed that the strengths of the lines corresponding to frequently used items will increase over time.
    A Google search on the words happy, happiness, full and fullness, carried out on July 5, 2005, revealed that while the word happiness was only 7 times less frequent than happy, fullness was 443 times less frequent than full. If these figures are representative of a typical speaker's receptive and productive experience with the words in question, it seems reasonable to assume that he/she might either have no single node corresponding to the word fullness or, at least, that its connections would be rather weak compared with those of happiness. (Lamb 1999, Bennett 2009) | Glottopedia, 2017

LEXICALIZATION HIERARCHY

1. (Grammar) I propose that lexicalization as defined here abides by the following hierarchy:

   QUALITY > TIME > SPACE > PROCESS > OBJECT > PERSON

    | Juan C. Moreno Cabrera, 1998
2. (Grammar) Cabrera (1998) proposes that lexicalization abides by the following Metonymical Concretion hierarchy:

   QUALITY > TIME > SPACE > PROCESS > OBJECT > PERSON

    He claims that while the grammaticalization hierarchy accounts for metaphorical abstraction processes, metonymy is involved in lexicalization, so the lexicalization hierarchy reflects metonymical concretion processes. | Natalia I. Kalachev, 2002

LEXICALIZATION TABLE
(Examples)
 ○ Frisian (Indo-European; Netherlands)

Lexicalization Table bakke 'to bake' SG

		√	v	π	PART	SP
bak-t	3SG	bak		-t
bak-st	2SG	bak		-st
bak	1SG	bak

Lexicalization Table wurkje 'to work' 2/3SG

		√	v	NUM	π	PART	SP
ʋœrk-ə-t	3SG	ʋœrk		-ə	-t
ʋœrkə-st	2SG	ʋœrk		-ə	-st

LEXICALIZE
(Examples)
 ○ Nearly 500 languages in Kinbank have a term for CHILD, but only a handful also have a word for PARENT (Passmore et al. 2023). According to the Intercontinental Dictionary Series, languages are more likely to have terms for SUN, WIND and RAIN than WEATHER, and more likely to name EAR and THINK than EARLOBE and IDEA (Key and Comrie 2023). We propose that these naming patterns are shaped by communicative need. For example, languages are relatively likely to lexicalize CHILD and SUN because there is more need to talk about these concepts than about PARENT and WEATHER, respectively. | Temuulen Khishigsuren, Francis Mollica, Ekaterina Vylomova, and Charles Kemp, 2025
 ○ Brinton and Traugott (2005) decide that although synchronic approaches have employed the term lexicalize to explain links between logical structure and syntax, they find it more helpful to think of lexicalization and grammaticalization in diachronic terms that assume gradual variation and change. | Jamin R. Pelkey, 2007
 ○ Aspect can be characterized as the "pattern of distribution of action through time". The term action as used here applies to a static condition—the continuance of a location or state—as well as to motion or change. In (1) are some of the aspect types lexicalized in verb roots, with both non-agentive and agentive English verbs exemplifying each.

Aspectual Meanings Lexicalized in Verb Roots
1.  a. one-way, non-resettable
     die, kill
    b. one-way, resettable
     fall, drop
    c. full-cycle
     flash, hit
    d. multiplex
     breathe, beat
    e. steady-state
     sleep, carry
    f. gradient
     widen (intransitive), widen (transitive)

Some European Denominations for myosotis palustris
1.  a. English
     forget-me-not
    b. Spanish
     nomeolvides 'not-me-forget'
    c. German
     Vergissmeinnicht 'forget-mine-not'
    d. Dutch
     vergeet-mij-nietje 'forget-me-not'
    e. Russian
     nezabudka 'not-forget'
    f. Hungarian
     nefelejcs 'not-forget'

LEXICOGRAMMAR

1. (Lexis; Syntax) A level of linguistic structure where lexis and grammar are not seen as independent, but rather as mutually dependent. The idea that lexis and grammar are interrelated has been promoted by a number of linguistic theories and approaches. In corpus linguistics, more particularly, empirical investigations of large corpora have shown that lexicogrammatical coselection phenomena are ubiquitous in language (e.g., verbs such as arrest, elect, name, and estimate are twice as frequent in the passive as in the active form; the adjective mere is attested only in attributive position; Biber et al. 1999, see also Römer 2009). The study of lexicogrammatical patterns has also exhibited particular growth with the popularization of usage-based or constructionist/Construction Grammar approaches, in which lexical items and grammatical constructions are considered to not be qualitatively different from each other, but differ only with regard to the degree of abstractness within one unified construction (Goldberg 2009).
    In other words, lexicogrammar refers to the lexicogrammatical dimension of language deals with (preferred) co-occurrences between words and their grammatical environments, or between grammatical structures and their lexical environments (cf. Biber, Conrad, and Reppen 1998). | Magali Paquot, Stefan Th. Gries, and Monique Yoder, 2020
2. (Lexis; Syntax) Or, lexico-grammar. A level of linguistic structure where lexis, or vocabulary, and grammar, or syntax, combine into one. At this level, words and grammatical structures are not seen as independent, but rather mutually dependent, with one level interfacing with the other.
    Lexicogrammar has been studied in various ways, through such notions as collocation, colligation, phraseology, lexical pattern, chunk, lexical bundle, formulaic language, and lexical frame, among others. The separation between lexis and grammar has been one of the cornerstones of linguistic scholarship, being incarnated in the dictionary and grammar, the two main reference points for language study. However, systemic functional linguistics and corpus linguistics, each in its own way, reunite these two levels, and, despite some divergence, advocate the uninterrupted continuity between and/or fusion of lexis and grammar. | Tony Berber Sardinha, 2019
3. (Systemic Linguistics) In systemic linguistics the grammar or linguistic system of a language itself is seen as comprising three levels or strata: the semantic stratum, the lexicogrammatical stratum and the phonological (or graphological) stratum.
   • The semantics account for the structure and patterning of the differend components of linguistic meaning of a text and, reflecting the different functions which language fulfils, are normally seen as constituting the grammar's generative base.
   • The lexicogrammar accounts through syntax, morphology and lexis for the wording structure and patterning of a text.
   • The phonology accounts for its sound structure and patterning (or the graphology accounts for the written/printed form structure and patterning).
   
    | G. David Morley, 2000

LEXICON

1. (Grammar) Every natural language has a lexicon organized into lexical entries, which specify information about word types or lexemes. | Luca Gasparri and Diego Marconi, 2024
2. (Grammar) The lexicon is the set of words of a language, while the dictionary is the work of reference that describes that word set. Lexicon and dictionary do not correspond. A dictionary is a concrete object, typically a book, in either printed or electronic format, whereas the lexicon is an abstract object, that is, a set of words with associated information, stored in our mind and described in the dictionary. The relationship between these two entities is approximately the same as the relationship that exists between the grammar of a language, understood as the set of its syntactic and morphological rules, and the book that lists these rules and illustrates how they apply (a grammar of English, of Italian, of Hindi, and so on). | Elisabetta Ježek, 2016
3. (Grammar) The component in the grammar which is in its bare form a list of words or lexical entries. It contains information about (a) the pronunciation, (b) the meaning, (c) morphological properties, and (d) syntactic properties of its entries. Furthermore, the Lexicon must contain at least the idiosyncratic information about its entries. Up to this point there is little or no controversy among linguists. However, beyond this matters become more complex.
    American structuralists (e.g. Bloomfield 1933) assume that the Lexicon contains only information that is completely idiosyncratic. Any property of a word which can be predicted by phonological, morphological, or syntactic rule will therefore be excluded from the Lexicon. In this approach the Lexicon is simply a list of morphemes.
    In other approaches (e.g. Halle 1973, Jackendoff 1975, Aronoff 1976) the Lexicon is more complex. Next to a list of underived lexical entries, it contains a word formation component. Hence, in this approach morphology is an integrated part of the Lexicon. For example, the English Lexicon contains the adjective opaque and the nominalizing suffix -ity. It furthermore contains a suffixation rule which adds -ity to adjectives, and by means of this rule the form [[opaque] ity] is derived. This form is changed into opacity in the separate phonological component.
    In a third approach, known as the theory of Lexical Morphology/Phonology (e.g. Kiparsky 1982), the Lexicon contains (a) a list of underived lexical items, (b) linearly ordered levels of word formation rules, and (c) a list of level ordered phonological rules. The difference between this approach and the preceding one is the position of the (lexical) phonological rules. In the theory of Lexical Morphology/Phonology the derived form [[opaque] ity] is changed into opacity within the Lexicon. These three approaches to the Lexicon are the most prominent ones.
    Spencer (1991) provides a good review of the function assigned to the Lexicon in a great number of theories. | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001

LEXICOSYNTACTIC TRANSFERENCE

1. (Examples)
    ○ This paper discusses an understudied, emerging type of relative constructions in Cantonese code-mixing speeches. The signature property is the usage of the English relative pronoun which, and it constitutes a relative construction that resembles its English counterpart. Earlier studies suggest that the constructions instantiate a case of lexicosyntactic transferences, involving both (i) lexical borrowing of the English relative pronoun which and (ii) syntactic borrowing of relative structures of English. | Tommy Tsz-Ming Lee, 2024
    ○ Research since the 1980s has shown that individual English content words and expressions are often "mixed" into Hong Kong Cantonese and informal written Chinese (Chan and Kwok 1990). Consonant with previous research in other language-contact settings, nouns are more commonly transferred than verbs and adjectives. Most of the reported cases of lexical transfer are insertions (Muysken 2000), but a few verbs would trigger lexico-syntactic transference (Clyne 1991, 2003), where the V-O pattern in English is preferred to the verb-specific O-V pattern in Cantonese. For example, compared with (1), (2) is far more frequently used:
   1. 我
      ngo5
      1SG

      要
      jiu3
      need

      將
      zoeng1
      DM

      張
      zoeng1
      CLF

      相
      soeng2
      photo

      擺
      baai2
      put

      上
      soeng5
      onto

      網
      mong5
      internet

      'I need to upload the photo onto the internet.'
   2. 我
      ngo5
      1SG

      要
      jiu3
      need

      upload
      UPLOAD
      UPLOAD

      張
      zoeng1
      DM

      相
      soeng2
      photo

      上
      soeng5
      onto

      網
      mong5
      internet

      'I need to upload the photo onto the internet.'
   
    | David C. S. Li, Cathy S. P. Wong, Wai Mun Leung and Sam T. S. Wong, 2016
    ○ Clyne (2003) also proposes a taxonomy of transference. The cover term transference is applicable to syntactic, semantic, prosodic and other types of transference and combinations thereof (for instance, lexicosyntactic transference). | Anna Verschik, 2006
    ○ Syntactic transference probably also facilitates lexical transference, as the transferred lexeme in lexicosyntactic transference makes the subordinate clause in German or Dutch grammatical, for example (from data gathered in Australia):
   1. BECAUSE
      BECAUSE

      die
      they

      wisten
      knew

      niks
      nothing

      meer
      more

      van
      about

      papa
      papa

      af,
      AFFIX,

      hé?
      you see

       

      Homeland Dutch

      omdat die niets meer van Papa afwisten, hé?
   
    The lexicosyntactic transference entails SVO instead of SOV in a subordinate clause, as in the German example (1). In (2), on the other hand, the lexical transfer introduces further lexicosyntactic transference:
   2. ik
      'I

      was
      was

      achtenzestig
      sixty-eight

      jaar
      years (old)

      BEFORE
      before

      ik
      I

      kon
      could

      GET
      get

      mijn
      my

      PENSION
      pension' (MD 28m)

       

      Homeland Dutch would require the auxiliary and PAST.PT to go to the end:

      Ik was achtenzestig jaar, voordat ik mijn pensioen kon krijgen.
   
    | Michael Clyne, 2003
    ○ This article presents two types of evidence obtained from the Hong Kong Chinese press before and after the handover—lexicosyntactic transference of English words and specific functions assigned to individual letters of the English alphabet—to show that Hong Kong Cantonese has been enriched at practically all linguistic levels, especially lexis and phonology, as a result of sustained contact with English for over a century. Lexicosyntactic transference occurs typically when a VO structure triggered by a transitive English verb is used in mixed code, supplanting thereby the corresponding intransitive verb in Chinese/Cantonese. | David C. S. Li, 1999

LEXIS

1. (Lexis) As Halliday said of Firth:

   At a time when few linguists, other than lexicographers themselves, devoted much attention to the study of lexis, and outlines of linguistics often contained little reference to dictionaries or other methods in lexicology, J.R. Firth repeatedly stressed the importance of lexical studies in descriptive linguistics. He did not accept the equation of "lexical" with "semantic", and he showed that it was both possible and useful to make formal statements about lexical items and their relations. (Halliday 1966)

    Lexis was being recognized as an autonomous level of language. That 1966 paper by Halliday was called, significantly, "Lexis as a Linguistic Level".
    In the same collection of papers was one by Sinclair, entitled "Beginning the Study of Lexis". It is interesting to note that Sinclair, writing in 1970, still feels that Halliday has not yet sufficiently accommodated lexis, and refers to "Halliday (1961), where lexis was assigned the role of picking up the scraps from the tables of syntax". | Ramesh Krishnamurthy, 2007
2. (Lexis) Barcroft, Sunderman, and Schmitt (2011) explain it as follows:

   The term lexis, from the ancient Greek λέξις for 'word', refers to all the words in a language, the entire vocabulary of a language. Plato and Aristotle spoke of lexis in terms of how the words of a language can be used effectively.

    Likewise, Jackson and Amvela (2000/2007) suggest that vocabulary, lexis, and lexicon are synonymous. The idea is supported by Larsen-Freeman and Decarrico (2010) when they write that vocabulary/lexis includes "...not only syntax and morphology but also phonetics, phonology, semantics and lexis (that is, vocabulary)". Nonetheless, some others make a distinction between vocabulary and lexis. When people think of vocabulary, they usually relate it to words and meanings. Lexis, on the contrary, is not only associated with words, but expands to include other layers of lexical knowledge. Stephen Van Vlack (2013) diagrams vocabulary (single words) as a subset of lexemes, which are a subset of lexical items, which are a subset of lexis.
    Discussions on the term lexis explain that it comprises a system of word units, which relates to other units creating a network of meanings ranging from polysemy, collocation, ambiguity, synonymy and frequency (Schmitt and Meara 1997, Miller 1999, Nation 2001). | Kelby Caro and Nayibe Rosado Mendinueta, 2017
3. (Rhetoric) According to Plato, lexis is the manner of speaking. Plato said that lexis can be divided into mimesis (imitation properly speaking) and diegesis (simple narrative). Gerard Genette (1976) states: "Plato's theoretical division, opposing the two pure and heterogeneous modes of narrative and imitation, within poetic diction, elicits and establishes a practical classification of genres, which includes the two distinct modes ... and a mixed mode, for example the Iliad". | Wikipedia, 2025

LIBFIX

1. (Morphology) Parts of words that share properties with both blends, compounds and affixes. They are deliberate formations, often with a jocular character, e.g. nerdalicious 'delicious for nerds', or scientainment 'scientific entertainment'. These are not one-off formations—some libfixes have become very productive, as evidenced by high type frequency in a single corpus.
    Libfix constructions do not always have discrete morpheme boundaries; they feature a wide variety of bases (including phrases, as in give-me-a-break-o-meter); and they may be the source of back formations such as infotain. | Muriel Norde and Sarah Sippach, 2019
2. (Morphology) "Various comments on word endings last week and this have persuaded me to add three entries to my site about the building blocks of English: the three are -tard, -flation and -naut," wrote Michael Quinion (2010).
    Playful word formation, portmanteau words, and the "liberation" of parts of words (like the three Quinion just listed), combine to yield word-forming elements that are semantically like the elements of compounds but are affix-like in that they are typically bound.
    Playful word formation—sometimes called expressive word formation, but neither label is entirely satisfactory—picks out patterns of word formation that have a playful or show-offy character to them; instances of these patterns often strike people as innovations and as decidedly informal. Some playful examples have the liberated elements that Quinion calls combining forms (but also classifies as prefixes or suffixes on the basis of their position within words), for instance -licious and its variants.
    Quinion's combining forms include both liberated elements and elements from complex learnèd forms, as in thermometer. It would be nice to have a term for the liberated elements that is both more memorable than "combining forms" and also signals the origin of these elements in the reanalysis of existing words (whether the source words are ordinary words, as with -tacular, or portmanteaus, as with -dar). I suggest "libfix", which can be labeled a prelibfix (prefixal) or a postlibfix (suffixal) when its position within the word is especially relevant. | Arnold Zwicky, 2010

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